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The Lorraine Motel was forever etched in America’s collective memory with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, but even before that fateful day, the property at 450 Mulberry Street had a fascinating history in its own right.
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National Civil Rights Museum 450 Mulberry Street Memphis, TN...
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- The Reporter
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- The Senator
- The Musician
- The Motel Owner
- The Brother and His Lover
- The Minister
Earl Caldwellsays being the only reporter at the Lorraine helped make his career and helped mar it. He went on to cover the Black Power movement and became the focus of a landmark legal battle when the government tried to force him to testify about the Black Panthers. He became a columnist for New York's Daily News. He never accepted investigators’...
Joseph Louw had his photo published in LIFEmagazine. It was the seminal image of the tragedy, and his future seemed assured. But a year later, he moved back to Africa, where few people realized he’d shot the Lorraine photo. And he didn’t tell them. Louw was traveling with King for a public television documentary. He had fled to the USA from his nat...
James Laue, the Justice Department observer, went on to become a pioneer in the field of conflict resolution, and he founded one of the first university programs in the discipline. In 1984, he helped establish the U.S. Institute for Peace, a federal agency that promotes conflict resolution. Laue, obscured in most of Louw's Lorraine photos, never vo...
Georgia Davishad a distinguished career in Kentucky politics and civil rights, but she became famous as Martin Luther King’s lover. In a 1995 memoir, she said she and King (who’d been married for 15 years and had four children) slept together at the Lorraine the night before he was killed. Davis, Lukey Ward and A.D. King were vacationing in Florida...
Ben Branch, who received King’s last musical request, never said much about what he saw at the Lorraine “He was not a talkative person to begin with," says his widow, Vivian. “And that really shut him up." There was one change, she says. After King’s murder, “he didn’t like to play nightclubs. He preferred churches." That was where he was stricken ...
Loree Bailey went to her room at the motel and lay down after King was shot. She lapsed into a coma and died five days later, the Tuesday of King’s funeral. She was 58. Her husband Walter hung a wreath on the door of Room 306 — it would “go down in history as the most famous motel room in the world," he said — and never rented it out again. Over th...
A.D. King and Lukey Ward, each married with children, broke off their affair when King was called to Atlanta after his brother's death to take his pulpit. A.D., traumatized by his brother's murder, struggled to fill his shoes. A heavy drinker who suffered from depression, A.D. was found dead the following year in his backyard swimming pool in what ...
The Rev. Billy Kyles embraced the tragedy. Dwania Kylesrecoiled from it. As a first-grader she’d been one of the “Memphis 13," the first students to integrate the public schools. “I was always the first this, the first that," she recalls. After the Lorraine, “I witnessed a sorrow I did not know existed. It was the first time I saw grown men cry. … ...
- Rick Hampson
9,175 reviews. #3 of 232 things to do in Memphis. Historic SitesHistory Museums. Closed now. Write a review. About. At the place of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'S death in 1968 in Memphis, TN, the National Civil Rights Museum is a renowned educational and cultural institution.
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Why did Martin Luther King stay at the Lorraine Motel?
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The Lorraine Motel is part of the complex of the National Civil Rights Museum. The wreath marks King's approximate place at the time of his assassination. The site first opened as the 16-room Windsor Hotel in 1924, and was later known as the Marquette Hotel.
- 1982
- .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct,.mw-parser-output .geo-inline-hidden{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}35°08′04″N 90°03′27″W / 35.1345°N 90.0576°W
- 1925
- Memphis, Tennessee
Jan 15, 2024 · Here in Memphis, we honor that legacy at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. King’s murder by an assassin’s bullet on the evening of April 4, 1968. The motel is a local, national, and global treasure, a pilgrimage for millions worldwide.
Location: 450 Mulberry St. Memphis, TN 38103. Significance: Site of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination. Designation: African American Civil Rights Network. MANAGED BY: National Civil Rights Museum.
